Be like a swan, paddling away under the water but on the surface, look like everything’s going well

As a world-renowned food stylist, Susie Theodorou is so busy jetting from job to job it’s a wonder she has time to write and test her own cookbooks. Still, she’s managed to produce five! Her latest, No-Cook Cookbook, published by Hardie Grant North America and shot by photographer Alex Lau (whom she first met when he was an intern at Bon Appétit) is a visual feast crammed with clever culinary ideas. Here Susie talks to Jenni Muir about how she developed her own food style and how her time on women’s magazines still effects her writing, recipe development and approach to cookbook design today.

Your books are all on different subjects. When you look back over them, what do you think unites them and might be thought of as ‘your style’?
My work has always been a ‘service’ style because of my background as a recipe developer and food stylist for magazines. Real Simple, Good Housekeeping and the weeklies are service magazines focused on providing solutions, whereas the glossies are escapism. So, I keep readers aware of new products and ways to incorporate them in their cooking, as well as showing them how to be a smart cook, saving on preparation time, cooking time and the number of utensils used.

The other aspect of my style is that I’ve constantly delved into recipes and traditions from around the world, because I want food to look appetising and global.

You said this book started out as another idea and evolved into No-Cook. Tell us about that…
Books need to have an identity, and therefore you do not want to use too many ideas in one book. Initially the no-cook was just one chapter, but slowly it evolved into the whole book, because the publisher recognised that there was a market out there for it.

I travel all over the world when food styling, and you see in the cookbook section of sooo many bookstores one section for special ingredients, one for food-and-travel, and now, more and more, a section for quick and easy cooking, which is the category my book falls under – not ‘no-cook’!

Magazines were a key inspiration for you for this book. Why? And how is that reflected in the content?
For me, the layout and presentation of recipe writing should reflect magazines. This book is full of big pictures to capture the audience’s attention. Every tip and idea is represented visually as well.

Some of the pictures use the ‘run-on’ style of recipe writing (where the ingredients are incorporated in the body of the method), in order to allow for a bigger picture, and to show that the recipes are easy and not that involved.

Who are the people who’ve particularly influenced your food style, and how?
Back in the nineties, when I was a young recipe developer and food stylist working full time on women's magazines, I was very, very influenced by Nigel Slater’s food writing and features in Marie Claire. His food styling and presentation all looked absolutely beautiful, appetising and very, very easy. I cut out all those pages and put them in a folder and followed them like a cookbook – then he started writing cookbooks!

Also, on Elle Magazine, Andy Harris was someone whose writing and recipe development were very influential. When I started working for him in New York (he became the editor-in-chief of Williams-Sonoma Taste magazine), he helped me widen the range of ingredients in my repertoire – artichokes, prickly pears, dandelion greens etc, etc

Then I got to work with Martha Stewart, where I was brought on because of my experience with fast recipes and styling. And working with Susan Spungen, food writer and stylist, at Martha’s was quite the work-dream-come-true as well.

Working with amazing creatives like Dierdre Rooney and Daniella Shone on the former Food Illustrated, now Waitrose Food, was an eye-opener when it came to styling. It got me thinking outside the box on how to present food – things like cooking muffins in a mug, so they cooked taller, and so on.

I also loved the writings of Claudia Roden, Elizabeth David, and Sophie Grigson and her mother, Jane Grigson.

You’ve worked on so many books for other people. What are the ones you look back at and think ‘that person’s food was amazing, that deserved a wider audience…’ What great talents have we missed?
Yes, I have worked on many cookbooks, and the ones I feel were amazing eye openers for me were the Indian ones. I worked on three books for Anjum Anand. Her recipes were very easy to follow, and I applied my styling knowledge to making them look very modern. I also loved Das Sreedharan’s Keralan cookbook Fresh Flavours of India – it was all sooo simple and delicious every time. Those authors showed that you could just serve one curry and a salad, and didn’t have to serve all the sides as though it was an Indian restaurant.

How do you go about creating recipes for your own projects?
Most of the time I taste something somewhere, or see an ingredient somewhere, and think: how can I use this or how can I make it? I try to make things the easy way round. When I get a writing or developing gig, I definitely think about the product and how best to present it in a clean, fresh kind of way.

How do you go about testing them?
I have to write basics down, with some quantities to start with, then I might test a recipe two or three times, and often I will be the stylist on the shoot for it, and final tweaks are made then.

How has the publishing experience changed over the years from your point of view?
The magazine world has changed drastically. But the book world, maybe not so much. There are many, many cutbacks of course, and publishers merging together, but the independents are putting the best books out, as their ideas are not all the same, and there’s no pressure to be homogenised. 
 
What was it like working on women’s magazines when you were younger?
It was a brilliant experience where I made my life-friends. We were all of very similar ages – well, we thought the thirtysomethings were really old, and we twentysomethings were about town eating and tasting everything. Little did I know! But I got to go to many, many food presentations, and restaurants and learned a lot about food from reading cooking books and food science books, and physically being in a place, not just roaming the internet.

What made you decide to go down the food stylist route professionally?
About three years into my magazine life, my food editor went on maternity leave and I ran the food department, a team of three. The food shooting ideas were mine, the style of plates we shot on were mine, and I found my voice and influences. Nigel Slater’s presentation style allowed me to figure out how to shoot bubbling food, and pictures with the food looking hot rather than cold and dry. That meant working with photographers who shot fast and allowed the food to look its best.

What advice do you have for people who want to write their own cookbook one day?
It's a passion project! You definitely cannot work on it for the money!

Was home economics a good foundation for your career? Do you think there’s a better way into it today?
Home Ec was good because it covered food science, whereas the cooking schools generally did not. Having a background in restaurant cooking can be good, but really you have to know some food science in order to know how and why ingredients interact the way they do. When cream curdles you have to work it out. You have to know why a certain cheese might not dissolve into a sauce so well, that the flour in a sauce has to be cooked out, and so on. As a food stylist, you are always problem solving.

What sort of person makes a good professional food stylist?
You have to have a love of food and a point of view as to what looks good and what does not. You also need a go-with-the-flow attitude as there are so many changes in a day’s work. When something’s not going to plan, you have to find a solution. Ingredient not available? Work through it. Last minute ask by a client? Accommodate with no fuss. Be like a swan, paddling away under the water but on the surface, look like everything's going well.

No-Cook Cookbook by Susie Theodorou is available from all good book retailers. Want to improve your food styling? Make sure you watch our free masterclass with Susie – sign up here.